Meanwhile, dental assistant Dale Arbus (Charlie Day) has been struggling to maintain his self-respect against the relentless X-rated advances of Dr Julia Harris, (Jennifer Aniston), when she suddenly turns up the heat.

And accountant Kurt Buckman (Jason Sudeikis) has just learned that his company’s corrupt new owner, Bobby Pellit (Colin Farrell), is not only bent on ruining his career but plans to funnel toxic waste into an unsuspecting population.

“Almost everyone has had a horrible boss at some point in their lives, someone who made life miserable,” says director Seth Gordon. “We all know how tempting it is to fantasise about how much better things would be if they were out of the way.

“This is a story about three guys who decide to do something about it.”

Week after week, longtime buddies Nick, Dale and Kurt meet for a few rounds to commiserate over their distinctly different yet equally desperate predicaments and the individuals responsible.

As the conversation (and the beer) takes its natural course, the guys end up reflecting on how much brighter their lives and careers would be if only their despicable bosses were out of the picture.

How nice it would be if they turned up dead one day.

Jason Bateman, who stars as the beleaguered Nick comments: “This is not exactly rational behaviour and I hope there’s no one like these guys out there.

We’re just trying to make people laugh. If they find a correlation between the story and their own lives, great. But I wouldn’t advise trying any of this at home.”

One thing audiences might be quite shocked at is Jennifer Aniston’s role as the sex-crazed Dr Julia Harris.

“I’ve never played a character so inexcusably raunchy and there was no way I could resist it – the dialogue and the situations are so outrageous and fun. I jumped at it immediately,” says Aniston, who calls the movie ‘a guilty pleasure’ for people unhappy in their jobs, to maybe go and get it out of their system by rooting for these guys.

“It really stretches the limits and crosses boundaries and Dr Harris is way out in front on all counts – guilty as charged,” she adds.

Aniston previously starred with Jason Sudeikis in The Bounty Hunter and with Jason Bateman in last year’s romantic comedy The Switch, but met Charlie Day for the first time on the set of Horrible Bosses.

Recalling the potentially awkward scenario of their first scene together, she says: “Within 20 minutes, I was straddling him in lingerie. But Seth (Gordan) never stopped laughing and we were all in perfect sync – if anything, after every take we’d be thinking, ‘let’s push it a little further.’

“I was bizarrely comfortable in these scenes, almost more so than I would be playing the normal girl-next-door, and every scene was kind of crazy but that was really the fun of it.”

Nick, meanwhile, faces a different kind of domination at the hands of his boss – the powerful, tightly wound VP Dave Harken, who lords over the cramped bullpen of Comnidyne Industries, where poor Nick toils alongside his fellow corporate drones in the futile hope of reward and recognition.

Says Spacey, who plays Harken: “You can’t even give him the benefit of the doubt, or think for a minute that he’s being tough in order to teach a lesson or encourage his employees to try harder and bring out their best. There are no underlying strategies that might redeem him. Harken is just a bully. He’s a terrible, terrible person.

“The three of us who play the bosses really back these three friends into a corner and I think audiences will completely understand why they’re driven to kill us,” Spacey concedes.

“Fortunately, everything they set out to do doesn’t go the way they plan in any way, shape or form. They make the worst decisions ever.”

By comparison, conditions for Kurt seem much better – at least initially. As the story opens he’s working for kindly Jack Pellit, played by Donald Sutherland as a man of warmth and integrity but that ideal situation can’t last. Jack is soon out and Bobby Pellit, the son who replaces him, is one wormy acorn that fell a very long way from the tree.

“Playing Pellit was all about channelling my inner douche,” laughs Farrell, who plays the third ‘horrible boss’. “This guy thinks he’s God’s gift to women, God’s gift to intellect, to humour, to the club scene, to everything. It’s all part of his grandiose sense of self-esteem, which is probably masking a deeper sense of being a disappointment to his father and being riddled with envy over the relationship his father had with Kurt, and all kinds of other things.

“With Pellit, Seth gave me complete license to act as pathologically screwed up as possible.”

As the three employees’ talked-about plans spring into action, starting with them staking out the bosses’ homes at night, they see the full expression of their bosses’ horribleness in ways unrealised at the office, leaving little doubt about the righteousness of their mission.

“The fun of the story isn’t whether or not these guys can actually succeed, but in enjoying their inept approach to a terrible plan,” concludes Gordon, who hopes audiences, who have experienced the same kind of frustration might emerge from the cinema with, ‘a new appreciation for how good they actually have it, and that, by comparison, maybe that their own bosses aren’t quite so bad.’